You guys rock!

Is there a benefit to this Thermostat over the Venstar model(s) outside of Indigo? I like the look of this one a little more I think, but I'm having a hard time picking out technical reasons to chose this over the Venstar one. I have a 3M 'radio thermostat' now that will be introduced to the dumpster as soon as a replacement can be delivered.

Terry

Not really. Indigo can set the clock on the Smarthome thermostat . Given that there are still some outstanding issues with it I personally would avoid it. The Venstar/adaptor combo (or the Venstar all-in-one) may not be perfect but at least it's a known quantity.

Curious (and I agree with your sentiment) - what problems are you having with the 3M?

roussell wrote:Is there a benefit to this Thermostat over the Venstar model(s) outside of Indigo?

I believe it has the capability to poll 2 additional remote temperature sensors (not yet available) which isn't available in the Venstar solution (though the top-of-the-line Venstar can have 1 additional external sensor connected). The ability to set the Smarthome thermostat time via Indigo could actually be quite useful IMO. If it's anything like the Venstars, if you happen to use the program function on that thermostat and loose power, the time will not be restored properly, so being able to remotely set it after a power outage would be helpful. Personally, I agree with Jay's point though. I wouldn't buy it until Smarthome fixes the known issues with their current production model. Never buy version 1.0.

Do you know what issues Smarthome has identified with the current version of the thermostat?

From Matt's earlier post in this thread...

matt (support) wrote:The known issue that I do not yet have a workaround for is that PowerLinc Group/Scenes cannot be used to recall mode/setpoint settings in the thermostat. But I believe most users are using the direct Set Mode, Set Heat Setpoint, etc., actions, therefore this is likely not a critical issue.

I don't know if Smarthome has identified other issues (or if they even acknowledge this one). However, where there's a bug there are often nests so I wouldn't be surprised if this weren't the only issue with this initial release.

The problem at this point is it doesn't consistently follow the INSTEON commands the Venstar uses. We've worked around most of the inconsistencies, but the PowerLinc scene one mentioned above I'm not sure how to resolve and I haven't heard back from SH yet with updated documentation.

So I don't know of any real deal breakers with it, but I would be cautious with 1.0 hardware. Also, since it doesn't have a removable INSTEON adapter, it is a bit of a pain to unscrew from the wall should it need to be replaced for a firmware update.

jay (support) wrote:Curious (and I agree with your sentiment) - what problems are you having with the 3M?

Losing network connectivity mainly - I never had much luck with your plugin - the "enable communicate from Indigo" checkbox always seems to get unchecked sometimes after only one polling/control attempt. Instead now I have a collection of curl commands to control and monitor it. That works fine for the most part until for some unknown reason it will lose it's IP address and need a power cycle or sometimes even a whole new setup procedure. Funny thing is I had no problems at all with it until a couple of firmware revisions back, been hokey ever since.

I'm a big fan of the Proliphix tstats and might just go with a couple of those - hardwired is hard to beat.

Terry

Yeah, there are definite improvements I could make to the plugin. When I built it I was failing when their docs said the stat would need to be power cycled. Clearly in your environment it's different. I just had to bail on working on it any more given the poor communication and reliability - I could have made a career out of just working around their problems.

And yeah, I was less than impressed with 1) their firmware reliability 2) their implementation (Auto was pretty much useless) and 3) their responsiveness to people developing support for their stats. The latter just completely floored me - you'd think a company like that would want to make sure they communicated well with 3rd party developers...

Does anyone know exactly what can and can't be controlled remotely via Insteon? The user's manual isn't very specific. For instance, can the setback times and temperatures be programmed remotely? Can the selection of a "master" sensor -- as described in the manual, the master sensor is the local or remote temperature reading used to control the thermostat -- be made remotely?

Currently, Indigo support for this thermostat is identical to the Venstar adaptor (with the addition of setting the thermostat's clock when we do a define and sync). There may be other functionality, particularly with respect to the not yet shipping Wireless Thermostat, that we haven't yet seen nor have we determined if we'll support any other functionality that may be available.

I ma having an issue where the cool set point is showing double the set temperature. It is making my thermostat crazy and it ran all night without shutting off. Any way to fix the issue?

Model 2441TH
Firmware A3

Received INSTEON "Master Thermostat" cool setpoint changed to 148.0
Received INSTEON "Master Thermostat" humidity changed to 72.0
Received INSTEON "Master Thermostat" humidity changed to 75.0
Received INSTEON "Master Thermostat" humidity changed to 76.0
Received INSTEON "Master Thermostat" humidity changed to 77.0

and wanted to also add this form the log:

*Humidity changes are constant

Jul 2, 2012 3:04:05 PM
Sent INSTEON "Master Thermostat" set cool setpoint to 75.0
Received INSTEON "Master Thermostat" cool setpoint changed to 150.0
Error setpoint temperature 149.0 out-of-bounds (using 99.0)
Sent INSTEON "Master Thermostat" set cool setpoint to 99.0
Received INSTEON "Master Thermostat" humidity changed to 74.0
Received INSTEON "Master Thermostat" humidity changed to 75.0
Received INSTEON "Master Thermostat" humidity changed to 74.0

Make sure you're using Indigo 5.1.2 or later - I seem to recall us having to work around a bug in that new thermostat's firmware where they had similar issues.

I am using 5.1.3. I did not see the issue when using 5.1.2. It seems to be present in this new 5.1.3 release.